Hell of a Country

(Kwela Books, 2025)

Hell of a Country is a creative reimagining of the Scissors Murder – a famous crime from early 1970s South Africa.

Eighteen-year-old Lorraine van Niekerk despises the fact that her boss and lover, middle-aged André Bekker, won’t leave his wife, Sunette, and marry her instead. Then one day her life fatefully intersects with driver Alfie Geemooi, a recent amputee who is on the run from the police.

André is an orthopaedic technician, and Lorraine can grant access to the prosthesis Alfie desperately needs – but at one hell of a price...

A pacy, poetic novel told from multiple points of view, Hell of a Country is a riveting true-crime story that examines the fault lines between power and desire.